One congresswoman making an economically illiterate statement on a comedian’s podcast is perhaps not a news story. But Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is arguably the most visible Democrat on Capitol Hill, and her recent comments about billionaires are part of a broad trend among Democrats and their base to inveigh against wealth creation.
As ignorant as their arguments are, it is not merely rhetoric when it influences public opinion and becomes what the youngest and most passionate Democrats believe — and they have a destructive policy agenda to back it up.
Recommended Stories
Last week, in response to a question from comedian Ilana Glazer about Immigration and Customs Enforcement “concentration camps,” Ocasio-Cortez launched into a diatribe about the evils of capitalism, during which she confidently asserted, “You can’t earn a billion dollars.”
“You just can’t earn that,” Ocasio-Cortez went on, “You can get market power. You can break rules. You can do all sorts of things. You can abuse labor laws. You can pay people less than what they are worth. But you can’t earn that.”
This is false. What “market power” did Taylor Swift abuse to obtain her billions? What rules did Oprah Winfrey break? What labor laws did Beyonce violate? Who did George Lucas pay less than they were worth?
Contrary to Ocasio-Cortez, some people create billions of dollars’ worth of value for their fellow Americans without breaking any law or abusing any person. It happens all the time, and not just in the entertainment industry. Smartphones, laptops, cars, planes, solar panels, wind turbines, and every other pillar of modern life have created billionaires. Billionaires have invented products, improved them, manufactured them efficiently, or, in one way or another, helped millions of people do something they want to do and are willing to pay for.
In addition to creating new ways for us to communicate, travel, and power our homes, billionaires have paid hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes along the way, which fund the very social programs that AOC and those of her party most want to expand. The top 1% of income earners pay about 40% of all federal income taxes despite earning only about 20% of all income. They are paying their fair share, and arguably more than their fair share.
Unfortunately, a growing number of Democrats see billionaires not as engines of economic growth but as villains who should be punished.
“The enemy is billionaires,” Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Maine, says in his campaign’s introductory video.
“The predator class, the billionaires, pose an existential threat to our democracy,” Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, said on social media. “Tax them into millionaires.”
In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani filmed a video outside billionaire Ken Griffin’s private residence while promoting a new tax on the part-time residences of the wealthy. “This is a fundamentally unfair system,” Mamdani claimed. “When I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich. Well, today, we’re taxing the rich.”
Mamdani is not alone. In California, a ballot proposition leading in the polls would impose a supposedly one-time tax on individuals with more than $1 billion in wealth. In Hawaii, Democrats have proposed a wealth tax on those with a net worth above $20 million. In Minnesota, Democrats are considering a 1% annual tax on wealth above $10 million. And in Washington state, Gov. Jay Inslee (D-WA) has proposed a wealth tax on individuals with a net worth of more than $100 million.
CALIFORNIA’S ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION PROBLEM
You will notice that not all of these taxes apply only to billionaires. That is because a billion dollars is an arbitrary number. Once Democrats start taxing wealth, they will not stop with billionaires or even the wealthiest 1%. There is no end to Democrats’ thirst for other people’s money.
For now, billionaire job creators can flee to red states from blue states that want to tax them out of existence. The red states are happy to benefit from their drive and creativity. Many upper-income earners have already left California and New York for Texas and Florida. But that only works so long as socialist Democrats do not control the federal government. As soon as they do, they will tax billionaires out of existence, and we will all be poorer for it. You can no longer take that to the bank, but you can take it for granted.
